Louise Upston: Child Poverty Reduction Minister on the Government failing to meet targets for reducing child poverty

The Child Poverty Reduction Minister attributes stagnant progress to tough economic conditions. 

Annual figures to June show no real change since 2018, despite a cross-party commitment to halve the rate by 2028.

More than 143,000 children are estimated to be living in material hardship. 

But Minister Louise Upston says a growing economy will start to help. 

"For some families, the cost of living is still affecting them. The OCR drop yesterday - it takes a while for that to flow through and for families to really feel it."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Child poverty stats out today basically flat for twenty three
twenty four. The figure show from stats n Z seventeen
point seven percent of all key we children were in poverty.
That's based on household income after housing costs have been paid.
Material hardship that was just over thirteen percent. Target for
the government was nine percent. Loise Ubstance, the Minister for

(00:21):
Child Poverty, who's with me.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Hime, Minister, Good afternoon, Ryan.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
You're happy with that, of course not.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I mean, no New Zealander wants to see children in
poverty and unfortunately it reflects the very challenging economic conditions
we've had for the last few years.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
It's interesting, isn't it, because Labour's come out today and
said you've got the minimum what you know, you guys
didn't increase the minimum wage enough. You didn't you did
the indexation with the benefits. But really, when it comes
down to it, this is about economic growth, isn't it.
And it's about inflation.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Absolutely, so if you look at the cost of living,
we do know that those on the lowest incomes are
hit the artist with cost of living. So why we've
made really good progress in the last year. These statistics
are for the thirtieth of June twenty four and we
still know that there are some families the cost of

(01:15):
living is still affecting them. The ocr drop yesterday takes
a while for that to flow through and for families
to really feel it in their household budgets. So we're
a little way off yet. I know that's frustrating, and
it's just recognizing we've had very tough economic times, but

(01:36):
we as a government do not shy away from the challenge.
One of our three priorities for children and young people
is to reduce material hardship, and that's what we will
continue to work towards.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
Do you think that will happen in the next round, Well,
what we do know is.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
That a growing economy provides greater opportunities for people and
does have an impact material hardship. I can say that
confidently because when National was last in office in the
years from twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen, we reduced the
number of children in material hardship by fifty six thousand.

(02:14):
That is possible when the economy is growing and there
are opportunities for people to be in work and to
be earning higher wages.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
How to argue with that minister. Thanks for your time,
Louise Upston, who's the Minister for child poverty. The result
not great, but the driving force is growth. So we
need a bit of growth and we need to get
rid of inflation, which hopefully, according to the Reserve Bank,
we've done.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
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Speaker 1 (02:40):
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